


a word of advice

by Himmelreich



Category: Constantine (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-29 19:31:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12091881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/pseuds/Himmelreich
Summary: Angela comes to see John for advice one unpleasantly hot L.A. summer's day.





	a word of advice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [turtlebook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtlebook/gifts).



> Dear turtlebook! I read your letter last Yuletide and it very much reminded me of why I loved this movie so much, and I put it down as a treat to work on for sure. Then things happened and I had to drop out of Yuletide for various personal reasons, but this idea still never left me, so please excuse this very belated gift. I hope it's still enjoyable to you, thank you for providing me with the prompt of writing for these two!

They had talked about the impending heat wave on the radio for weeks now, to the point that it could happen that when switching from one city channel to the other, you would hear one host finish the previous’ sentence about how to best deal with it. Overall, their recommendations seemed to boil down to “If you can, just avoid going outside”. As if that was going to be of any help to most people.

Angela groans as she steps out of her car, the metal of the door she slams shut almost hot enough to burn her fingertips. The asphalt below her feet radiates the heat twofold, and near instantly she can feel her blouse begin to cling to her skin uncomfortably, droplets of sweat forming at her neck even with her hair pulled back in a ponytail to avoid the worst of it.

Squinting at her bright surroundings, she finds the streets unnaturally deserted and lifeless for midday weekend hours, all windows and doors closed in an effort to lock out the hot air, the humming and groaning of A/Cs running at full power now as constant a background noise as the traffic on the highways in the distance.

The shutters are closed on the first floor above the bowling alley, too, but she still enters the building without hesitation. Over the last weeks, she had tried to hone her tracking skill for people with some ties to supernatural forces, those likely on the verge of being tipped over by demonic influence, so now someone as heavily entangled with them as John is a presence impossible to miss. 

Somehow the conditions are even worse within the hallways inside, the stagnant air feeling like hot liquid devoid of oxygen filling her lungs. At his door, she lingers for just a second, then knocks thrice, careful not to touch any of the symbols and spells she can sense have been painted on it with invisible ink. She wonders if he actually cared enough as to not want to traumatise other inhabitants of the building with the occult imagery or if there was a more, well, John-like reason for keeping them from public view.

From inside, there is the sound of metal scraping on tiles, then steps, and then she can hear the lock turn and John opens the door just a fraction.

 

“Hi,” she says.

“Are you here to arrest me?”

Angela blinks. As usual, John’s face gives away nothing, his tone dry and neutral.

“No?” 

“Well, if that’s so, come in.”

He steps back, opening the door for her, and she gets a good look at him for the first time this day. Despite the sweltering heat, he is still wearing his usual dress pants, shirt and tie, the only concession to the temperature being rolled up sleeves. Overall, though, he looks unfairly unfazed by the heat, no sheen of sweat whatsoever, while Angela is fairly sure that at this point, her blouse is probably semi see-through. Which would also explain the glance-over John gives her as she passes him by, entering the twilight of his lair.

“Why would you think I’m here to arrest you? Did you do something stupid enough to warrant that?” she asks, walking along the windows where the drawn blinds cast stripes of golden light on everything, letting her fingers trail over the endless canisters of holy water he keeps stocked. They are strangely cool to her touch, and she realises with sudden surprise that his entire apartment is, even though she can’t hear an A/C running anywhere. If it was some kind of spell, she direly needed him to cast the same one on her place.  


“I had a rather unpleasant run-in with colleagues of yours in New Orleans earlier this week,” he explains, walking past her towards his kitchenette. “You do them the favour of dealing with their problem of serial killings caused by one goddamned halfbreed, and that’s the thanks you get. Coffee?”

He turns and holds up the pot in question, and Angela eyes the liquid inside, pitch black and of suspiciously tar-like viscosity, with vague apprehension. 

“Water, please.” She lets her gaze wander over into the next room, and sees his bed is made, and there’s a half unpacked suitcase lying on top of it. “You’ve just come back, then?”

John hums in confirmation, and she turns at the sound of him pulling her a chair at the table.

“Disruptions in the balance such as which happened here make a lot of these bastards cocky, thinking it’s their chance to try and ignore the rules,” he explains as she sits down, taking the cold glass of water from his hands with a grateful nod. “Not that I’m not enjoying sending them straight down for it.”

He takes a sip from the tarmac in his cup, leaning against the sink,  nd Angela can sense the feeling of satisfaction radiate off him like physical warmth, so different from the suffocating aura of desperation she had gotten from him when first unlocking her powers. No doubt it was easier doing his work now that he knew he was no longer bound for the same place he sent his adversaries to. 

“I see.”

 

For a moment, they sit in silence, Angela drawing random patterns in the condensed water droplets on the outside of her glass. On the table in front of her, there is an ashtray, but it is filled with empty plastic and aluminum packages of nicotine gum. The place still smells like smoke, though, and sulfur, but she guesses these scents would cling to John no matter where he went, anyway. 

“Why did you come?” John’s voice pulls her focus back in, and she turns to see him observe her, head slightly tilted to the side.

You said you would like to see me around, she thinks, so why are you acting so cagey. But instead of putting him on the spot like that, she pulls the folded photograph from her back pocket. 

“A sergeant at my precinct was called to investigate a case of vandalism the other night. A passer-by called the police when he saw a bunch of teenagers behave suspiciously near an overpass west of Old Town, saying he saw them burn something and hear them chant strange things. By the time a patrol car showed up, they’d all run off, so all they found were smoldering embers and this, sprayed on the wall.”

She pushes the photo over the table, and John takes it, turning a few times over with a frown. When he does not react right away, she goes on: 

“After… after all that’s happened, there apparently is the rumour in the precinct that I’m the person to consult with in regards to occult imagery.”

“That’s what happens if you’re seen associating with me, I warned you.”

Angela clears her throat, but ignores the statement.

“Anyway, he came up to me yesterday, asking for advice since they haven’t found a concrete lead yet and aren’t sure if it’s truly satanic in origin or just, well, born of some teenager’s goth phase. I tried looking it up in the police database but couldn’t find a clear match for it, and I haven’t really found a reliable source to check demonic symbols in outside of that, so...”

She trails of and feels a bit self-conscious of a sudden, more with every second that John still just looks at the picture without saying a word. There was no evening school introductory course for these things, so without a doubt she still was lacking a lot of basic knowledge about demonic and angelic forces. Even if she would say something entirely off the mark, he had no ground to be condescending, really. Not that it had ever stopped John in the past.

 

“John?” she prompts after a while, and he finally looks up.

“What’s your read on the symbol?”

He is testing her, she can tell, even if he kept his expression neutral as always. I am a medium strong enough to have been chosen by the devil’s son himself, she reminds herself, so I should trust my verdict, no matter what John Constantine might think.

“Sadly by the time I was told, locals had already washed down the actual graffito, so I couldn’t get as clear an insight as I was hoping, but there was a vague feeling of unease. Cold, seeping deep into my bones, and… wet?”

It sounds weird to her own ears as she says it, but she does not let it fluster her, meeting John’s stare head on. After a second, he smiles, eyes narrowing with the genuine expression of approval.

“Not bad,” he says, pulling a chair to sit down next to her. He picks up a pen from where it had been lying as a bookmark in an open bible on the far side of the table, and flips the photograph over to begin drawing on the white backside.

“It’s imprecise and missing a few sigils, and clearly drawn by amateurs with no proper instruction,” he explains, and Angela leans in closer, watching with fascination as a complex symbol forms under his hands, his lines precise and clean, movements sure and easy, speaking of years of practice. It is oddly captivating, and she only realises he has finished when he pushes the paper back towards her.

“Try it now.”

 

She reaches out without thought, only stopping with her fingers almost touching the drying ink and casting a questioning look at him. His expression softens ever so slightly, and she tells herself that John would never let her do something unreasonably dangerous or painful. 

Bitter he might be, occasionally arrogant and self-centered, but he was not needlessly cruel. Something stirs in her memory at that thought, the image of an unfortunate spider trapped under a glass of smoke, belying that general statement. She glances up at the corner across above the kitchen lamp, where a spider web stands out in the remaining order and neatness of John’s apartment. She thinks she can make out movement at the centre of it. You’re still here, too, she thinks, so don’t judge me for coming back, either.

Angela takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and lets her fingertips ghost across the smooth paper, tracing the indents the pen’s tip made. For a split second, there is nothing, and she almost wants to laugh at her moment of insecurity. Then, the feeling of drowning in icy black water hits her with such force that she forgets how to breathe, her entire body shuddering at the biting cold on her skin. But she is not alone in the darkness, she realises with sudden horror, there is a presence alongside her, wrapping around her and trying to force its way into her throat, trying to get her to call out its name even as she struggles to gasp for air, determined not to let it overcome her. 

 

It ends as suddenly as it started, and when she opens her eyes, she is back at John’s table, still shaking slightly with a paradoxical cold, and when her gaze snaps towards the symbol that caused it all, she notices that she is no longer touching it. John had drawn her hand away, keeping her trembling fingers still between his warm palms. 

“Are you all right?” he asks softly, and she nods, still breathless.

“What  _ was _ that, John?”

“It’s a sigil to summon forth Furcalor’s power, a strong demon linked to water. His kind can’t just cross over into our realm, so if you know how to use this type of spell correctly, it’s a powerful source to draw magic from.”

“Do you?” she asks, feeling nauseous at the thought. Even if her emphatic powers were much more sensitive than his, she has no doubt that the sensation for any user of this magic must be unpleasant to say the least.

“Not if I can help it, no.”

He lets go of her hand, and she feels a pang of regret at the loss of contact, but he only gets up to pour her a cup of coffee after all, putting it down in front of her. She takes it gratefully this time, letting the warmth seep into her fingers, inhaling the strong scent.

“As for your vandals, my guess would be one of them probably got their hands on a grimoire that is either the real deal or happened to get one sigil almost right, at least. They can’t really do damage with a bastardized version of  it, but nevertheless, I’ll ask around if anyone’s heard anything.”

“Thanks.”

Angela takes a sip and barely suppresses a grimace. It tastes like undiluted caffeine, and she starts to suspect that chain smoking had not been the only unhealthy habit of John’s. She shakes her head, as if that could help her get over the unpleasant aroma, and something seems to catch his attention.

John leans in close, his hands brushing the back of her neck, and then he hooks his fingers under the second necklace she is wearing besides the small golden cross she had gotten as a gift on occasion of her first communion, pulling the amulet attached to it out from under her shirt, looking it over as it rests between her collarbones.

“You’re wearing it, that’s good.”

He is close enough that she can feel his breath stir her hair, his voice a soft murmur but still carrying. 

“With you gone, I needed my own protection, right?”

John huffs at her challenging tone, and lets the necklace slip under again slowly, but does not remove his hand from where it comes to rest against her skin.

“Seems like you did a good job so far.”

Angela closes her hand around his wrist before he can pull back as he always does, ever only getting close when he feels like it and then moving on at his own pace.

 

“You should teach me more about this,” she tells him, pinning him under her stare. She can feel the impressions and sensations vibrating behind the thin veil that shields her from picking up everything about all the people she touches, and she knows he can tell as well, but he does not struggle against her hold. He had always been very upfront with her, and she has no doubt that if she pushed, he would let her see, witness the hellfire and bloodshed that trailed behind him first hand. She does not.

“I’m not a talented medium myself. I could try to find you a more suited mentor if I ask Midnite, maybe-”

“No,” she cuts him off. “You already know about me, you know what happened to me and what I’m capable of. More than insight into how to enhance this ability, I need to know how to deal with the kind of powers I encounter thanks to them.”

His lips curl into a sarcastic smile.

“I make for a shit teacher, Angela. You should ask Chaz about it if you run into him at some point.”

“I don’t care.”

He just looks at her, eyes dark and unreadable. 

“I can teach you about how to apply protective charms,” he begins, almost reluctantly. “Maybe a few more simple spells to create barriers that can keep halfbreeds out, that should be-”

“I want to learn everything you can teach me,” she interrupts him again, squeezing his wrist slightly. “I don’t want to stumble around in this world half blind and ignorant, John.”

 

It is a silent fight between them, and Angela is determined not to budge an inch. At last, John sighs, letting his hand slide off her neck over her shoulder as he walks past her into his bedroom, only to come back to drop a small stack of old books onto the table in front of her.

“Basic required literature,” he tells her from over her shoulder, one arm braced on the table, the other on the back of her chair. “I remember you’re up to date on your canonical Bible texts, so let’s start with apocrypha and supplementary texts regarding demonic and angelic legions.”

Angela trails her fingertips over the gold print on the leather cover of the book in front of her, tracing the title in a language she does not understand, yet. There is a sensation of power vibrating from the pages beneath, she can tell, absorbed from the many times it had been exposed to rituals and the magic channeled through its users’ hands.

“Come back here once you’re done,” John murmurs close to her ear, and the hair on the back of her neck stands up in response. “And maybe I’ll teach you how to cast a protection spell then.”

“You’d like that,” she says, feeling lightheaded at the prospect.

His laugh is a soft reverberation against her skin.

“I would.”

 

When she closes the apartment door behind her, crossing back into the relentless heat of the mundane world outside of John’s own sphere, the stack of books balanced between her arms as she tries to get her car keys out of her pocket, her step has a noticeable spring to it. She would not let John weasel his way out of commitment this time. 

She had made her decision to enter his world in this very apartment, by his help, and he was utterly mistaken should he think she would just walk out on him now that the immediate threat was over.

At her car, she turns to wave up at the drawn blinds on the first floor. She did not need to be a psychic to know he was watching.

“See you next week, John,” she says into the empty street, and drives away with a smile.


End file.
